Welcome to the Weighted Lottery!

Use this website to submit lottery applications for noncommercial Colorado River rafting permits:

1. Create and manage your user profile, which contains your contact information, points, river trip history, and all lottery applications you've submitted or are listed on.
2. Create and submit a lottery application for a noncommercial (private) river trip when a lottery is open.
3. Pay lottery application fees.

In addition, you may also use this website to:

• Add your email address and opt-in to receive notifications of upcoming lotteries.
• Make changes to your pending lottery application at any time before the lottery closes.
• Monitor the status of your pending lottery application, i.e., make sure payment for applicable fees was successfully processed, verify participants you listed as Potential Alternate Trip Leaders (PATLs) have confirmed their PATL status on your application, and double-check there are no disqualifying problems with your lottery application.
• Find out whether or not your application was successful in a lottery.
• Fill out and submit your noncommercial river permit application, print a trip participant list, and pay permit fees (if you won a launch date in a lottery).

For more information about the weighted lottery visit www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm or contact us at 800-959-9164 or 928-638-7843 (8am-noon MST, Mon-Fri) or grca_riv(insert the at symbol here)nps(insert a dot here)gov.

Permitting Process Overview

The following is a quick overview of the permitting process. A more detailed description of each step in the application and permitting process is given here.

Step 1: Create a profile. All persons listed as either a trip leader or a Potential Alternate Trip Leader (PATL) on a river lottery application must have a user account (profile) in this system.

Step 2: Login and create your application. Once you have a profile (and a lottery is open), you can login at any time before the lottery is run to create and submit a lottery application.

Step 3: Submit your completed application. All PATLs listed on your application must login to this system and accept their PATL status before the lottery drawing date; PATLs failing to do so will not be included in your lottery application.

Step 4: Pay lottery application fee. A completed application is not active until fees are paid. Lottery applicants are required to pay a $25 application fee only once per launch year. Once an application fee has been paid for a launch year, you can apply in all lotteries for that launch year for no additional fee. Pay the $25 lottery application fee through this website.

Step 5: Lottery occurs on designated date. After the lottery, you will be notified of the success/failure of your lottery application by email. You can login at any time to view the status of your lottery application. If you win a launch date, you will pay a trip deposit fee ($400 for standard size trips, $200 for small size trips).

Step 6: Complete a river permit application, draft trip participant list, and pay permit fees. If successful in the lottery, you will complete a noncommercial river permit application and pay your river permit fees. You will also submit a draft trip participant list. All of these are done online through this website.

Step 7: River permit is issued. When the above steps are complete, the Grand Canyon River Permit Office will issue your river permit.

FAQs